Sledge remained impassive, but he pulled something small from his waistband and held it out to her. In his hand, engulfed by his massive palm, was a small black blade with a wooden handle.

“I wouldn’t arm a prisoner.”

Caledonia was suddenly dizzy. Her ears buzzed lightly, her fingers tingled. It was the blade Lir had stabbed her with four long years ago, the night he killed her family and destroyed their ship. She kept it with her as a reminder—of what she had lost and why she needed to fight. She drew a slow breath and took the blade.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice unnaturally distant.

Sledge stepped back and moved to the doorway, opening it to reveal a sky filled with a dusky-blue glow and a boy seated just outside. She recognized him by his scowl and his shadowed jaw, and thanks to Sledge she had a name for him: Pine. His attention was focused on the blade in his hand and the whetstone he used to sharpen its long edge.

Before leaving, Sledge turned to meet her eyes once more. “It’s a true pleasure to have you in our camp, Caledonia. I do hope you’ll consent to stay.”

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Caledonia spent hours watching the color of her tent change from a very dark khaki to shadowed khaki to smudged khaki to khaki with a hint of sunlight behind it. She went from thinking khaki was a beautiful, subtle color full of unexpected variations and depth, to thinking it was an insult to all other colors to call it such. She’d traced the patterns of dirt stains and followed each seam from beginning to end more times than she could count, and she still couldn’t move a muscle without setting off a chain reaction of pain that reduced her to shivers.

Most of all, she focused on the color of her tent to keep from thinking about how she was trapped inside it. Again and again she steered her mind away from whatever distant waters now carried her crew. But no matter how hard she worked to drown her thoughts in the khaki threads around her, she discovered herself far away.